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Obama’s Authoritarian Style

Get out of the way, punch back twice as hard, and report anything fishy.

By

James Taranto

Updated Aug. 10, 2009 12:01 a.m. ET

Last week a special assistant to the president, writing on the White House Web site, urged supporters of ObamaCare to report dissent: “If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.” Some saw this as an assault on civil liberties; others, as a clumsy but essentially innocuous attempt to gather information. Our opinion, which we explained Wednesday (second item), tended toward the latter, although we did find the wording a bit creepy.

We are revisiting this view in light of two new developments that, along with the request to report speech that “seems fishy,” add up to a disconcerting trend: The Obama administration, perhaps out of desperation, is increasingly adopting an authoritarian style of rhetoric.

Last Thursday, as the Roanoke Times reports, Obama appeared at a rally for Creigh Deeds, Virginia’s Democratic nominee for governor:

Obama also did some campaigning for himself, defending his administration’s efforts to fix the economy and blistering Republican critics, who he blamed for creating the crisis he inherited.

“I expect to be held responsible,” Obama said. “But I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking.”

Now, it is perfectly acceptable, if not presidential, for Obama to keep disparaging the Republicans and the previous administration. But “don’t do a lot of talking” crosses a line. This is America, and they have a constitutional right to talk all they want. “Get out of the way” is problematic as well. The Republicans whose terms ended after the last election are out of the way, having left office to make way for Obama, his men and his allies in Congress. What can the president possibly mean here other than that he demands that they stop participating in politics--again, something that, in America, they have a perfect right to do?

Also on Thursday, according to Politico, “top White House aides gave Senate Democrats a recess battle plan”:

[The aides] showed video clips of the confrontational town halls that have dominated the media coverage, and told senators to do more prep work than usual for their public meetings by making sure their own supporters turn out, senators and aides said.

And they screened TV ads and reviewed the various campaigns by critics of the Democratic plan.

“If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard,” [Deputy Chief of Staff Jim] Messina said, according to an official who attended the meeting.

Normally one would not take Messina’s statement seriously. Politicians are always “fighting” for their constituents, running “attack” ads, getting “into the ring,” waging “war” on this or that social problem and otherwise playing at combat.

But Messina knew that the Democrats were busy portraying citizens who oppose ObamaCare as a violent “mob,” and in that context this becomes more than a clichéd pretense. In fact, some administration allies seem to have taken Messina literally, as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:

Kenneth Gladney sat in a wheelchair on Pershing Avenue Saturday, his knee bandaged, holding a flag that read: “Don’t Tread on Me.”

Gladney, 38, was handing out the same flags after a town hall forum in Mehlville Thursday night, when, he says, he was attacked by members of the Service Employees International Union. . . .

Members and supporters of the St. Louis “Tea Party” coalition say Gladney was attacked, unprovoked. Union members and their supporters say Gladney initiated the fight.

Whoever started it, in such a context it is wrong for those in positions of power to urge their supporters to “punch back twice as hard.” Responsible politicians would deplore all such violence and leave it to the police to deal with it.

The statement attributed to Messina does not meet the legal definition of incitement (a necessary element of which is an imminent threat of violence), and it might well have been made carelessly rather than maliciously. But of late the president and his senior staff have been, at best, awfully careless in their rhetoric.

We still find all of this far from alarming. American institutions are strong enough, and the country’s culture of freedom deep-seated enough, to thwart any authoritarian impulses Obama and his men may have. The White House’s “fishy” expedition has proved embarrassing and could, as blogger Kenneth Anderson speculates, cause legal difficulties. Tumult at town-hall meetings only heightens the sense that ObamaCare is something menacing, so that it is against Obama’s interests for his supporters to initiate or escalate violence.

As for Obama’s petulant demand that his critics shut up and get out of the way, surely every president (and many people who are not president) wishes from time to time that he had the power simply to brush off opposition and get his way. It’s just that most of them are wise enough not to say so when the country is listening.

Till Completion Do Us PartOne question about ObamaCare that has caused enormous anxiety has to do with the category of “end-of-life care.” Would people feel pressured, or be forced, to pull the plug on those who, on economic grounds, are deemed not worth saving? Would ObamaCare allow or encourage assisted suicide, even euthanasia?

These are serious questions. Last July we noted that Oregon’s socialized health plan had denied a $4,000-a-month cancer drug to 64-year-old Barbara Wagner. But the bureaucracy cheerfully informed her “that it would cover palliative, or comfort, care, including, if she chose, doctor-assisted suicide.” (Portland’s KATU-TV reported that the drug’s maker, Genentech, responded to a plea from Wagner’s doctors and let her have the medicine free. Such charity would be unsupportable, obviously, if the entire country were subjected to a plan that refused to pay for the drugs.)

So, how bad is ObamaCare in this regard? Charles Lane of the Washington Post looks at the House version of ObamaCare and finds some of the alarms are unwarranted. It’s already illegal for Medicare to fund suicide, euthanasia or mercy killing, and ObamaCare (at least in this iteration) would not change it.

“Still,” Lane writes, “I was not reassured to read in an Aug. 1 Post article that ‘Democratic strategists’ are ‘hesitant to give extra attention to the issue by refuting the inaccuracies, but they worry that it will further agitate already-skeptical seniors.’ ” The reason for the hesitation, Lane argues, is that the proposal “is not totally innocuous.”

Until now, federal law has encouraged end-of-life planning--gently. In 1990, Congress required health-care institutions (not individual doctors) to give new patients written notice of their rights to make living wills, advance directives and the like--but also required them to treat patients regardless of whether they have such documents. . . .

Section 1233 [of the House ObamaCare bill], however, addresses compassionate goals in disconcerting proximity to fiscal ones. Supporters protest that they’re just trying to facilitate choice--even if patients opt for expensive life-prolonging care. I think they protest too much: If it’s all about obviating suffering, emotional or physical, what’s it doing in a measure to “bend the curve” on health-care costs?

Though not mandatory, as some on the right have claimed, the consultations envisioned in Section 1233 aren’t quite “purely voluntary,” as Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.) asserts. To me, “purely voluntary” means “not unless the patient requests one.” Section 1233, however, lets doctors initiate the chat and gives them an incentive--money--to do so. Indeed, that’s an incentive to insist.

Patients may refuse without penalty, but many will bow to white-coated authority. Once they’re in the meeting, the bill does permit “formulation” of a plug-pulling order right then and there.

It’s not unreasonable to worry that increased government control over health care--especially in an age of out-of-control spending--would be a camel’s nose. Blogger William Jacobson, a law professor at Cornell, notes that one cutting-edge thinker in this area is Ezekiel Emanuel, a physician, Obama adviser, and brother of the White House chief of staff. Dr. Emanuel advocates something called the Complete Lives System. The CLS, he has written, “considers prognosis, since its aim is to achieve complete lives”:

A young person with a poor prognosis has had a few life-years but lacks the potential to live a complete life. Considering prognosis forestalls the concern the disproportionately large amounts of resources will be directed to young people with poor prognoses. When the worst-off can benefit only slightly while better-off people could benefit greatly, allocating to the better-off is often justifiable. . . .

When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.

The Associated Press quotes one ObamaCare critic, Sarah Palin, a former Alaska governor, who is troubled by this prospect:

”The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care,” the former Republican vice presidential candidate wrote.

What a rube, what an ignoramus! Sarah Palin doesn’t know enough to call the Life Completion Commission by its right name.

HUAC Is Back?Today the House Un-American Activities Committee is best remembered as an early proving ground for a young Rep. Richard M. Nixon and for giving us the “Hollywood blacklist” (often erroneously attributed to Sen. Joseph McCarthy). The committee changed its name in 1969 and formally dissolved in 1975--but to judge by an op-ed in USA Today, HUAC may be back.

The article is written by Steny Pelosi and Nancy Hoyer, the two top House Democrats. Its title: “ ‘Un-American’ Attacks Can’t Derail Health Care Debate.” By “un-American,” the duo seem to mean “rude”:

These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views--but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades.

The “facts” to which they refer turn out to be not facts at all but representations about the glories of ObamaCare: “Health insurance reform will mean more patient choice. . . . Reform will mean stability and peace of mind for the middle class. . . . Reform will mean affordable coverage for all Americans. . . . Reform will also mean higher-quality care.”

What, you don’t believe it? You better believe it, or you’re un-American--the kind of guy, as Pelosi put it last week, who goes around “carrying swastikas.”

All we can say is, America is very lucky that George W. Bush was president. Had he not been, we might never have found out that dissent is patriotic.

The White House and allies in Congress are well aware of the effort by Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a somewhat surprising political alliance, given the industry’s recent history of siding with Republicans and the Democrats’ disdain for special interests.

That line about “the Democrats’ disdain for special interests” is doubly biased, since (a) it appears in an article about a backroom deal between a Democratic administration and an industry lobby, and (b) it leads one to wonder: If trial lawyers, labor unions, radical environmentalists, etc., aren’t “special” interests, what kind are they?

Metaphor Alert“The real wake-up call needs to be in the Republican Party where the fringe is blurring with the base and there’s a trickle-down of Obama derangement syndrome from some of the influential figures out there who keep stirring the pot.”--John Avlon, “Campbell Brown,” CNN, Aug. 7

A Jewish member of Fatah was nominated for a spot on the party’s Revolutionary Council on Saturday, the Palestinian news agency Ma’an reported.

Dr. Uri Davis told Ma’an that one of Fatah’s weakest attributes has been its failure to establish ties with international parties, movements and human rights organizations, and promised to step up efforts, if elected.

Born to Jewish parents in Jerusalem, Davis describes himself as a Palestinian Hebrew.

Fatah, of course, is Yasser Arafat’s political/terrorist organization. Arafat is in stable condition after dying at a Paris hospital.

When Uri joined Fatah, the board of directors concluded the interview by asking: “What were you before you became a Palestinian?”